What are Blogs Good for Anyway?

Are you kidding me? Blogs are the new cave dwelling, the rock and chisel, the ink and quill, the newspaper, the new billboard, the email—blogging has become THE way we communicate to the general public. Like almost anything new and innovating, blogging wasn’t always taken seriously. For the traditional readers and trailblazers in the industry, it was a new type of technology phenomenon that would fade away like the rest of the fads.

Here’s the thing. Technology just doesn’t go away. It evolves.

You want to know what blogs are good for? It’s good for selling a product or idea, being seen, having your voice heard—blogging is about engaging in a conversation with prospective customers. Now lets take a look at how we got here.

From Paper to Computer

From a journalist’s perspective, the Internet was nothing more than a new kind of video game—at first. Then programmers started making the Internet more user-friendly with sophisticated programs. All eyes were literally on the Internet and businesses started taking note of this. Getting a website to supplement its business became the priority of everyone. Soon, the Internet became every business owner’s calling card.

It appeared that the newspaper industry was the last to get on the digital bandwagon. As more people looked to the Internet for information, newspaper sales painfully decreased. You might remember newspapers slowly shrinking from a widespread publication, to almost an oversized black and white magazine that it is today. At any rate, they were forced to comply with the demands of consumer information and start printing their content online—essentially giving away their content. It was either that, or fade away with the other printing industries that had gone bankrupt.

Even television had to bow down to the Internet and extend their news content on to the Internet, but it was something about free content that eventually began to take pique businesses attention, but before we get to that, lets talk about what came right before this.

After awhile, this virtual room of websites became crowded. There needed to be a way to find the content that you were looking for.Search Engine

A search engine is a software program that is designed to search for specific content in the Internet. Search engines had been around since 1990, but it wasn’t until 1996 that the world became familiar with Netscape, mainly through Yahoo! In 2000, Google became the most reliable search engine by implementing a page ranking system with a sophisticated algorithm that ranked web pages according to how many links where connected to it as well as how many clicks they received, how many people engaged with the page, and so forth.

This brought about some order in the Internet and people had to start ‘playing fair’ now.

Birth of the Blog

Anytime something new gets introduced into the mix of communication technology, there’s going to be something that counters it, or should I say evolves around that invention.

Texting

As the Internet became a dominant presence, the evolution of the smartphone was on the rise. Then considered just a mobile phone, the most sophisticated attribute this device had was a texting feature. Users would use the letters on the traditional telephone number pads to relay a text message. As tedious as this process was, it became another phenomenon. It was the new way of note-passing and consumers seem to prefer it more over calling someone and even email.

Engaging Technology

What the Internet and the mobile phone had in common was the functionality where people could interactively engage. It was the new television for the ages. Through interactive technology, our world became a little smaller. The world indeed had become a global village.

So what happens when you put a bunch of people who are trying to deliver a message into one room? Chaos! The Internet is kind of like that. Thanks to the filtration of the search engine, users can now pick and choose what they want to see.

Enter the Blog

Now that is a problem for the less popular sites that don’t rank as high. So how can these low ranking sites get more visibility? Yep, blogging!

As it was becoming more obvious that people preferred to stare at their computers and mobile devices, it only made sense to use them as a vehicle for advertisement. The thing was, people didn’t—and still don’t necessarily want to be solicited—in any way, especially through means of entertainment—unless it’s done in a form of entertainment!

People are on their mobile devices and computers for one thing: information. I do it, you do it, everyone does it—heck we need it!

So when a natural stone tile wholesaler is trying to sell to a developer, contractor, or hardware store, they’re going to start writing valuable content about the type of material they sell. If they’re smart, they will end every publication with a call to action that links back to their homepage.

Blogs Sell Product!

That’s basically the gist of it. If you want to sell your product, write about it and publish it online as free content. People like free stuff, and if it’s useful, then they’ll keep coming to you for more information. Eventually, you’ll become a leading authority, establishing yourself as an expert and voilà! You’ve got sales, you’ve got customers, and those customers just might turn into loyal clients.